


Like Magic

by rewmariewrites



Series: Practical Alchemy [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: Ed Likes Sex, F/M, Grief, I will add tags as I update chapters, Ishbalan | Ishvalan Alphonse Elric, Ishbalan | Ishvalan Edward Elric, Ishbalan | Ishvalan Sig Curtis, Ishbalan | Ishvalan Trisha Elric, M/M, Mei is Al's age, Non-Canon Compliant Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Sig is Trisha's brother, Swearing, The Elrics have Alchemy and Magic, a gross misuse of commas and italics, based in the FA universe but pulling heavily on Practical Magic plot, canon compliant character death, read beginning notes for content warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-15 09:43:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15410175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rewmariewrites/pseuds/rewmariewrites
Summary: Three things happen at once as soon as he sets the note down on the counter.1) He sneezes. Sneezes are Not Good, and only ever mean that something is happening with Ed that is going to cause Al a lot of grief. This, combined with:2) four sneezes means that someone is probably literally going to die, which, okay, that’s pretty worrying for an Ed-related premonition. But then:3) the phone rings. The Craft phone, not Al’s cell phone or the home line, and there are quite a few people who have the Craft number but all of them know to only call that number if someone needs immediate assistance because they’re literally on death’s door.He answers on the second ring: “Hello?”“I need help.”“Brother?”





	1. Tic-Tic-Tic

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first part of my FA/Practical Magic AU! This part has three chapters that have already been written, and the second part hasn't been written yet. Updates will be once a week, so hopefully by the time late August rolls around I'll have a good start on part two. Make sure to read notes at the beginnings of chapters for content warnings!
> 
> In the meantime, here is Chapter One - basically 3300 words of exposition. This one got away from me a bit. Power through, I promise plot starts next chapter.
> 
> Content warnings: mentions of terminal illness, grief, casual racism. If I miss anything let me know!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al finds out about the curse when he is four years old and his brother is six, when his father leaves and his mother dies three months later of a sickness that makes her shake and twitch and cough.
> 
> (Sometimes, when they are too deep in their grief, but also on October third, they can still hear the tic-tic-tic of the deathwatch beetle.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the first part of my FA/Practical Magic AU! This part has three chapters that have already been written, and the second part hasn't been written yet. Updates will be once a week, so hopefully by the time late August rolls around I'll have a good start on part two. Make sure to read notes at the beginnings of chapters for content warnings!
> 
> Content warnings: mentions of terminal illness, grief, casual racism. If I miss anything let me know!
> 
> edit 03/02/19: just some flow and grammar edits no reread necessary

Al finds out about the curse when he is four years old and his brother is six, when his father leaves and his mother dies three months later of a sickness that makes her shake and twitch and cough. 

(Sometimes, when they are too deep in their grief, but also on October third, they can still hear the  _ tic-tic-tic _ of the deathwatch beetle.) 

Trisha never had alchemy - that was a gift and a curse left to Ed and Al by their father - but she left them with her magic and her own curse, one passed down from her mother and her mother and  _ her  _ mother before them, placed by a vengeful ancestral matriarch furious at her abusive husband for putting her on death’s door more than once, that would murder all the lovers of all the children of her line forever. To keep them safe, presumably, though Al is sure that no one but her has ever thought that would work out the way she wanted.

Ed hopes that van Hohenheim, their father, is dead. That the curse was able to reach out to wherever in the world he is and  _ choke _ the life out of him. Al… doesn’t really care one way or another, but he supposes that’s close enough to wanting him dead to count.

After their mother dies, her brother Sig moves in with them - into their huge house by the huge oak tree on the huge hill - with his wife, Izumi, who he is wholeheartedly devoted to. She is already dying, but none of them really care. Sig says whatever time they are given will be enough, and Izumi says she’s not going anywhere without a fight, so whatever time she and Sig get will be worth it. She is tough, she is a wonderful teacher  _ (Terrifying, not wonderful, Ed would shudder, she left us on that island for a whole month! When we were ten! For  _ **_training_ ** _!), _ and she teaches them so much about alchemy that eventually it’s not something that their father gave them, it’s  _ theirs. _

(Neither Al nor Ed actually fall for Izumi and Sig’s ‘what will be will be’ act, because they are young but not  _ stupid, _ but they do need parents, and even dying parents are better than none at all. Trisha taught them that.)

The one thing that Izumi could never teach them is how their magic and their alchemy interact, and that grey area where the two touch is a good part of the reason why the townspeople are terrified of them and not just their family’s reputation for death. Alchemy is widely understood: it is science, it is equivalent exchange, and it can be practiced and applied with enough work, even if one does not have a particular gift for it. Magic, though, is intuition and premonition and a scent on the wind. It is superstition and seeing things that aren’t quite there but  _ could be, _ and the people of Amestris burned all the Ishvalans  _ years ago _ so magic should be nothing but a fairy tale by now.

So, the townspeople explain it away as  _ genius, _ rather than admit that their two ‘all-Amestrian boys’ might have Ishvalan magic. It’s flattering, in a roundabout and convoluted way, but… incorrect.  _ Insultingly misinformed, _ Ed would say, sneering at the small town’s casual racism, cataloguing their microaggressions to turn them around and use against them later.

Though they have nothing to fear from the Elrics except for the consequences of the curse (and Al and his brother have been _so careful_ to keep themselves emotionally unavailable that that’s not really a worry either), the townspeople remain overwhelmingly afraid of the magnitude of what can be accomplished with Elric alchemy, even when it’s divorced from their magic. 

It’s hard to blame the townspeople for being wary, given the current political climate; alchemical talent such as the Elrics’ is a bright, shiny beacon for the military, and the military is widely feared for its brutality  _ (Ishval  _ **_burned_ ** _ ). _ Ed and Al, with their unparallelled talent, merit the full attention of the  _ highest levels _ of the military, possibly even the attention of the Fuhrer himself, though he would never deign to come for them personally. 

Had they been noticed a few years after Trisha’s death, maybe by some hotshot up-and-comer making an underhanded play for power, they probably would have been scooped up and hidden under the Fuhrer’s nose until they were needed to spark a revolution. At eight and ten years old Al and his brother were prodigies with raw talent that could have been shaped for  _ exactly _ that purpose, willingly and enthusiastically. 

At twenty and eighteen, though, they are  _ terrifying _ in their absolute control over the immense power of their alchemy, and they have no love for anyone outside their close-knit family. It would take something very, very drastic to make them give themselves away to an institution that has systematically eradicated a  _ very _ important part of who they are and how they define themselves  _ (a whole culture basically gone, hanging on by the skin of its teeth, unable to find a foothold). _ The Elrics can do a lot of things out of spite - some say they are made of it, in the same way fish are made of water - and burning the military to the ground has a certain poetic flare.

Resembool - so close to the Ishvalan border and to the horrors of that genocide - very understandably does not want military power brought down on their heads again. They  _ cannot  _ risk the military coming to take the Elrics away, and they _ cannot _ risk the Elrics becoming military themselves. 

Al wonders, sometimes: if Resembool could have driven the Elrics out, would they have? Would they have risked Ed’s torrential wrath, Al’s quiet fury, just for the  _ possibility _ of ensuring their place out of the line of fire? It’s a close call as to which option is worse between being unhappily tolerated or being thrown out on their ears, but at least this way Ed hasn’t physically lit anything on fire, yet. If they  _ had _ been run out of Resembool, not even Al could have stopped him from razing the entire town.

(But none of that matters, because here the Elric brothers are, powerful as even the most renowned of the State Alchemists, and they are _ rooted _ in this little town and they  _ refuse _ to go anywhere. It’s only a matter of time before the military comes a-knocking. It’s a miracle they haven’t come already.)

Specifically, the townspeople are afraid of the way Al and his brother refuse to use transmutation circles  _ (not even the Flame Alchemist can do that, they whisper, he still needs his gloves), _ their intuitive grasp of what symbols to use where and when in their arrays  _ (a little like those Ishvalan cards, you know the ones, the ones that could tell the future), _ and their casual treatment of a science that requires mastery  _ (a science that brings ruin dressed in military blue). _

They don’t realize how much Ed and Al have studied and still study, how they scrape and hoard together academic papers like cenz just so they can learn a  _ little bit more, _ because for them to be able to maintain their intuitiveness and forego the arrays, that information needs to be a  _ part of them _ in a way that people that aren’t Elrics will probably never understand.

No matter the underlying cause for the fear that drives Resembool to single out and ostracize the Elrics, it  _ hurts. _ The old lady on the street corner always says, “At least they don’t  _ look _ Ishvalan,” and the  _ so when the military comes for them they can’t burn the town for harbouring illegal immigrants  _ is implied.

It wasn’t the first comment like that, nor will it be the last, but it is by far the most consistent, and Ed looks like he wants to turn the old woman  _ inside out _ every time she stage-whispers to her friends like maybe the Elrics’ Ishvalan blood means they can’t hear the hurt she’s spewing towards them. It hurts, because it’s  _ not fair _ that even though Al and Ed have to listen to whispered (and  _ not _ whispered) slurs and degradations thrown their way, they still get to walk around freely while the rest of their people are prosecuted and hunted just because of their brown skin and red eyes. It hurts, because they grew up having to bite their tongues and watch their step  _ just in case _ someone with a particular fear of the military found out about their magic. It hurts.

Ed has decided that he has no time for this casual dismissal of his birthrights. He lets his hurt make him sharp, until he has  _ become _ the fine line between beautiful and poisonous, ready to take away everything you hold dear and have you thank him for it afterwards. His alchemy and magic are  _ his _ and he has so little left that belongs to him that he will fight tooth and nail for this, and  _ fuck _ everyone else. 

Al’s not joking, though he kind of wishes he was. Part of Ed’s ‘brilliant plan’ is to  _ fuck _ the population of Resembool into submission, and he does it with an enthusiasm unparallelled. 

At seventeen Ed figures out he’s beautiful, and at eighteen he knows what sex is and  _ exactly _ how to get it. He cycles through paramours like he’s collecting data:  _ brunette, redhead, blonde, athletic, feisty, wholesome, smart _ . Three separate marriages fall apart in his wake, and not one of those sorry adulterers can give a better excuse than, “It was enough to be at the center of his world, even just for a moment.” 

(Everyone understands why they fell, even Al, even if they condemn all those horrible cheaters for it anyways. Ed is a force to be reckoned with on a good day, and as terrifyingly tremendous as a god come to earth on the bad ones. Ed is molten gold, fluid and tantalizing and so soft it  _ burns, _ and any smile he deigns to dole out feels like a taste of divinity. It is almost a relief when, at nineteen years old, he runs out of warm bodies in Resembool and takes off to Central.)

Al takes a  _ very _ different approach to dealing with his hurt. Namely, he doesn’t. He internalizes it and makes it small. Then, he makes a version of himself that is also small, so as to fit the town’s limitations, even as his body grows large and broad like Sig’s and their Ishvalan forefathers’. 

At 6’5” and a solid eight inches taller than his brother (six taller than the average Amestrian, but also at least four inches broader than anyone he’s ever met excluding Sig), Al knows he is intimidating enough to scare a  _ lot  _ of people. He manages not to intimidate old women into crossing the street, but just barely, and only by virtue of making himself known as the one who will unfailingly carry their groceries across town and back. 

Al makes himself much smaller than he would like to be, than he thinks he should be. He  _ knows _ that he is solid gold to his brother’s molten, soft enough to scratch but sturdy and gleaming and  _ beautiful, _ and he could be  _ just _ as divine as his brother if only he were given the opportunity.

While his bulk alone would not be enough to worry people in a place like Central - which is a large enough city that the people who stand out need to be either  _ really _ weird or  _ really _ dangerous - it  _ is _ enough in Resembool, so he shrinks himself to keep the peace. He wears a placating (if bland) smile, he does not rage or yell at injustice like his brother (though he wants to), and he does not brandish his alchemy or his magic with the practiced ease he knows he can (it is his  _ birthright). _ For his efforts, he is left mostly in peace.

It works, until it doesn’t. 

~

Mei Chang is a Xingese girl on exchange with the military to study alchemy, passing through Resembool on her way to Central. The military ignores her alkahestry just like Resembool ignores Elric magic, and soon she and Al are bonding over their secrets. They spend some time together - an afternoon in a coffee shop on what they think will be the one and only day they will ever see each other - sharing quiet laughs and inside academic jokes over alchemical equations, finding companionship they never thought they would get in a glorified village like Resembool. They actually _close out_ the coffee shop - the employee glaring daggers at them as she flips chairs up onto the tables around them - and Al even walks Mei back to her hotel afterwards. They run into Sig and Izumi on their way through Main Street, but the resulting interaction is short and Al is too caught up in his and Mei’s conversation (about new developments in the transmutation of iron from various mixtures of components, _which is_ _so cool)_ to be distracted for long, especially since he only has these last few minutes with her.

_ Except, _ before Mei can leave town the next day, her escort takes ill. Two days later, her car won’t start. Seven days after  _ that _ a message comes telling her the train she was meant to catch out of the next town has been compromised, so why doesn’t she just take some time to rest and study instead of making the seven hour car-ride, and they’ll send for her later? Both she and Al are elated, and they continue to bond over arrays and symbolism, divesting their secrets in the quieter moments they share together, bonding over how alkahestry is tied to the movements of the earth and how magic renders even the most basic of alchemical tenets…  _ weird. _

So it’s a week, and then it’s two, and then it’s three, and all of a sudden it’s been almost three months and Al is shaking and panicking because he’s  _ in love with her, _ with the way she acts and speaks and thinks and  _ is, _ and the phantom ticking of the deathwatch beetle is catching him off guard what seems like every hour for a week. 

That’s probably the reason that when he does actually hear the deathwatch beetle  _ (I should have known, I should have known, I should have  _ **_listened_ ** _ ), _ he convinces himself that he’s imagining it again. 

Well, he  _ tries _ to convince himself that he’s imagining it, but at some point in the process he takes a hammer and crowbar to the floorboards to try and  _ find that damn beetle _ because he doesn't even have the presence of mind to just use  _ alchemy _ to tear them up because if he can  _ find _ the beetle and  _ kill _ the beetle then maybe Mei will be safe.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sig tells him later, quietly, in the dark of his shuttered bedroom where only hours before he and Mei had shared a stolen morning, ignoring Al’s quiet and broken  _ I know, I know it doesn’ts, _ “the deathwatch beetle is the closest we’ll ever come to interactin’ with a spirit. It’s just here for us, to warn us. Whether we want it or not.”

Al's love for Mei is the one secret he has ever kept from his brother, if only by virtue of Ed having basically dropped off the face of the earth. Al has letters upon letters addressed to Ed about his days with Mei: about her laugh, her dark braided hair, her keen mind for alchemy, and about all of the alkahestral information she could teach him in three short months. It’s easy to see  _ now _ that he was in love with her, when he sees it written down like this. 

Now that Mei is dead, now that she’s fallen victim to a curse that’s already stolen so much from them, he’s glad it’s a secret from his brother because he can keep these memories to himself for just a _ little bit longer. _

Obsessing over her memory is how Al starts researching human transmutation. It was originally the product of a broken-heart’s-worth of whiskey and a night by himself in the house, but he took up his notes again in the morning, on a whim.  _ ‘Scientific curiosity’,  _ he called it then. 

He kept working on those notes well into the evening.  _ Then _ he scoured the house for more notes, more arrays, all through the night. 

(Ed had brought up the idea of human transmutation a little after Trisha died, when the two of them were desperate and alone in their huge house on the huge hill by the huge oak tree, and they started their research using van Hohenheim’s old books and notes, the ones he had left in his study. “It’s only fair,” Ed had said then, eyeing the papers with equal amounts of suspicion and desperation, “he left us alone, and he left all of this alone too, so it belongs to us now.”

It was only when Sig and Izumi moved in that he and Ed put the idea to rest, because not only is human transmutation breaking the fundamental rules of alchemy, Izumi would  _ murder them _ if she caught them.

But the way things are going, even death by Izumi is looking better than life without Mei.  _ Anything  _ is better than life without Mei.)

~

Al goes so far as to plan the circles and begin accumulating ingredients for the accompanying spell, because he thinks that with magic maybe he can trade himself for her. His family’s existence is an omen of death, but if he’s gone, if he brings her back by trading his own life and uses magic to ensure the equivalent exchange (because plain alchemy wouldn’t work, it hasn’t worked before so why would it work now, the _magic_ is the key), it would set everything back to the way it should have been: Mei safe and whole and studying a subject she loves, and Al… small and inconsequential. 

And maybe,  _ maybe, _ the whole ordeal will break the curse.

He willfully ignores all the little voices in his head that sound like Ed that are telling him this is a bad idea, that this isn’t how magic  _ or _ alchemy works, that he can’t come back from this.

It’s Izumi and Sig who bring him out of it, in the end, with their confession.

“Why?! Why would you do this?!” Al cries. He is  _ furious, _ and  _ appalled, _ and  _ confused. _

“We know it was wrong,” Izumi placates, not daring to touch Al, not knowing whether he’ll lash out or break down completely,  _ “I  _ know it was wrong. It was me who convinced Sig to work the magic. I was worried about you - you have no friends outside of us and Ed, and you need  _ something _ outside this cursed family. I just wanted you to have a  _ friend. _ I thought you would just be… happy. I didn’t think you would fall in love, and even if you did, I didn’t think the curse would count it.”

Al didn’t know he could be so angry and feel so numb at the same time. “You can bring her back. You know about human transmutation, you  _ tried _ it once,  _ bring her back.” _

“No, Al, we won’t do that.” Sig says quietly, the first thing he’s said all night. “What it’ll call back is… unnatural. It won’t be her.”

“But you  _ can, _ you can do this, I know, I  _ remember, _ I found Teacher’s notes when you moved in after Dad left and Mom died, and I don’t care what she is  _ I don’t care _ as long as she’s-”

“We won’t.” Sig’s voice is soft, but firm and final.

_ "Then you had no right,” _ Al spits, and never before has he sounded so much like Ed, so full of fury and bitterness that it’s threatening to split him apart.

Izumi’s face goes hard, then, and she stands and goes to leave the room. She has to stop at the doorway, limbs faintly shaking and a hand clutching her abdomen, and Sig makes a stuttering motion to go to her before she waves him off. “You shouldn’t miss out on love just because it’s going to end one day, Alphonse.”


	2. Amas Veritas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re making a spell,” is all he says, dumping everything across the floor, herbs and minerals cascading everywhere, ignoring Al’s indignant squawk, “Quit your shit and get over here.”
> 
> “I can’t just quit my shit, I’m in the middle of a batch!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Two of Like Magic, Part 1 of Practical Alchemy! One more to go, expect an update next week!  
> I've updated the tags - if I've missed anything let me know!
> 
> note: In the style of ShanaStoryteller, the Ishvalan language is represented here by Hebrew. It's just dictionary Hebrew, so if any of you have better translations, let me know! Translations are in the notes at the end of the chapter.
> 
> content warnings: non-explicit descriptions of violence and domestic violence, drug abuse (kind of?), murder, unhealthy coping mechanisms
> 
> edit 03/02/19: just some flow and grammar edits, nothing substantial, no reread necessary

A week later Al has used all the money he has saved up in his entire eighteen years of living to buy a small shop on Resembool’s main boulevard. He still lives at home, but he can’t stand to be there for long, in the places that he and Mei shared, so he pours his energy and alchemy and magic into creating. Creating what, exactly, he doesn’t know, but right now it seems to be a lot of… soap.

He continues to make a lot of soap up until Ed slams his way into his store  _ (when did he even get back into town?) _ holding a large bowl and seven large tote-bags worth of what looks like a mix of alchemical and magical components.

“We’re making a spell,” is all Ed says, dumping everything across the floor, herbs and minerals cascading everywhere, ignoring Al’s indignant squawk, “Quit your shit and get over here.”

“I can’t just  _ quit  _ my  _ shit, _ I’m in the middle of a batch!”

“Quit! The! Shit! It’s spell time! Your shitty fucking soap can wait! I took the fuckin’ train all the way here from fucking  _ Central _ and my back is fuckin’ killing me and Izumi says you’re in the middle of a depressive spiral - which is  _ my thing, _ by the way - so we’re doing a spell. Array. Whatever. Right now.”

Under his breath Al points out that  _ his _ depressive spirals are entirely justified while  _ Ed’s _ are more of a product of a few very  _ prominent _ personality flaws, but Ed’s hearing has always been far too keen. After a pointed side-eye that promises pain, Al abandons his soap and joins Ed in the middle of what appears to be the beginnings of an array made out of long lines of herbs instead of chalk or charcoal.

“Is that-”

“Lavender? Yeah.”

“ _ And _ willow bark?”

“Yeah.”

“That feels pointed, brother.”

“That’s because it  _ is _ pointed. If you were even a little bit chill I would have brought something else.”

_ “I am literally always the most chill.” _

Ed’s eyebrows travel three quarters of the way up his forehead and, okay, maybe  _ that _ was not the most chill moment Al has ever had. That may be a bad example of his general chillness. 

“What spell are we doing?” He asks to distract Ed. 

Ed’s ego is already bigger than his smaller-than-average body can contain, he doesn’t need to dwell on things like Al being wrong to make it bigger. The only reason Al doesn’t tell him so,  _ to his face, _ is because Ed would yell for half an hour and Al only likes instigating Ed when he doesn’t have to deal with the consequences directly.

“We’re doing Amas Veritas.”

In an instant, every bone, muscle, and tendon in Al’s body locks up. He can’t meet his brother’s eyes, he can’t shake his head, he can’t say anything. All he can do is sit there, vision going spotty at the edges and spinning, shaking and thinking about Mei’s dark eyes -

Her long black braids - 

Her tiny hands as they performed complicated alkahestry arrays -

The phone call and how they wouldn’t let him see the body -

The truck that hit her -

If he was supposed to be  _ grateful _ that it wasn’t the sickness instead, like the town seemed to think -

He doesn’t know how long he’s trapped in the memory, but eventually enough sensation returns to his body that he feels Ed’s hands on his biceps, not moving or stroking, just holding constant pressure, and his voice counting and telling him to breathe.

“How many panic attacks have you had, since… you know?” Ed asks after Al’s breathing is mostly normal. He doesn’t say since what.

“... a few.” The heels of Al's hands hurt from where they’ve been scrubbing back and forth over his jeans.

Ed is silent for a few moments before he says, with fake cheer, “I have to go back to Central to get a couple things, but then I’m coming home for a while. Maybe I can even help you in your shop!”

Al pointedly ignores the last statement, because if Ed was on his staff there would be a myriad of consequences, including  _ but not limited to _ : 

  1. none of the town would come to his shop, _ever_ , 
  2. Ed would use all the product under the guise of ‘testing’ it,
  3. he’s slept with everyone in town of consenting age _and_ broken all their hearts, _horribly_ (see option _1_  for aforementioned consequences).



But he can’t say these things because then Ed would get sad, and Al would have to comfort him. And it’s Al time right now, not Ed time.

“Brother, I can’t do a… a love spell.” Is what Al says instead.

“Ah! But this isn’t your average love spell!” Is what Edward comes back with, rocking back and forth a little, gold eyes wide with excitement. “We’re going to make a thing so that we  _ never _ fall in love, not really.”

“Explain. Emphasis on the ‘not really’ part.”

_ “So. _ What we’re going to do is we’re going to take turns naming unlikely traits and sticking an herb into the bowl, and then when we feel like our person is impossible enough - as in  _ cannot fucking exist in this world  _ \- we finish the spell with some of our alchemy-magic shit to make sure it sticks. If the people we dream up can’t exist, they have no chance of dying, and the curse dies out with us!” Ed emphasizes his point with jazz hands.

It’s crazy. It’s absolutely nuts. There’s no way that this will work, that he and Ed will be able to create parameters so perfect that the array  _ can’t  _ find anyone and so won’t give them  _ anything,  _ that’s not how equivalent exchange  _ works - _

“It doesn’t have to be equivalent, it’s  _ magic,” _ Ed whispers, and Al decides  _ fuck it. _ Ed has always been the one with the better grasp of what magic is and isn’t capable of, especially as it pertains to alchemy (he is a  _ true _ genius, worthy of the title the townspeople gave them), and if he says it will work, it probably will.

“You or me first?” He asks instead of telling Ed any of this, because he is feeling  _ petty _ and  _ mean  _ and  _ does not want to give any compliments _ .

“Me, because I’ve had more time to think about it. But once we start the incantation we can’t-”

“We can’t stop. I know, brother, we’ve transmuted together since before we could walk.”

_ “I  _ transmuted, you just sat there and fucking  _ watched _ like -”

“ _ Yeah _ , cause I was  _ literally an infant!” _

“You say that like you think it’s an excuse for your  _ lazy-ass  _ \--”

~

They begin with their hands on the outside of the bowl, hands spread wide across the breadth of it, just barely not touching each other. The array is spread wide around them, taking up almost the entirety of the empty shop’s floor, laid out in complicated lines and intersections of herbs and minerals, filled with intent. 

Ed looks thoughtful, his loose, long hair glowing like spun gold in the light of the budding sunset outside the shop. Al knows that he looks much the same, for all that he is big and broad and shorn to his brothers’ small and lean and flowing. Like this, bathed in the light of the sun, completely golden and kneeling at attention, ready to create a moment that will change their lives, they look like they hail from a people that were lost to this world before Amestris could even  _ dream _ of becoming a country.

(If the word Xerxes drifts across their minds, like a whisper in an open field, they ignore it. They have more important things to do than chase half-formed premonitions.)

“They will be tall and strong and broad, but flexible and willing to bend,” Ed says, plucking an oak leaf from the floor and dropping it into the bowl. Al raises an eyebrow (because of course  _ flexibility _ is Ed's most desired quality in a partner, the  _ pervert) _ but Ed’s face remains impassive and relaxed even while he refuses to look Al directly in the eye. 

“They will know  _ all _ our favourite books,” a sprig of rosemary goes in, to raise the right kind of energy,

“Their favourite shape will be an array,” and lavender follows, for luck and calm,

“They will be as swift and loyal as a horse,” a little bit of willow bark, for more calm (it’s not like he and brother need more high-strung people like themselves, after all),

“With the eyes and ferocity of a hawk,” a handful of rosehips of varying shades, for good luck and good spirits,

“And a secret I can see on their skin,” some bay leaves, to help their wishes along,

“And they will be unbearably beautiful,” and cowslip to make sure,

“And  _ genius  _ at what they do, in the same way as us,” some cinnamon for passion,

“We won’t ever be able to lie to them, or they to us,” magnolia - the flower, the stem, the root, all of it - to ensure fidelity, because neither Ed nor Al has ever suffered a cheater, in any context,

“And they will be  _ bright _ .” Al states with finality, dragging the last bit of jasmine off the floor and into the bowl so that any broken hearts will be eased with haste. With a start, Al notices that the rest of their herbal array, so much more than could have fit into their bowl  _ (seven bags worth), _ is gone. Just, vanished.

_ (Like magic.) _

Ed and Al pick up the bowl as one and take it out into the street where the sunset is now fully burning across the sky. They continue down the street, holding the bowl between them, and they walk and walk and  _ walk _ (though Al will swear until he’s red in the face that it was only  _ steps, _ or at least it felt like it) until they come to the huge oak tree outside the huge house on the huge hill where they live with Sig and Izumi, where their ancestral matriarch placed the curse that began everything. 

Al’s not really sure what happens after that, but he knows he stares up into the leaves of the old oak tree until suddenly there are stars and a full moon in the sky, and the bowl is empty.

He looks over at Ed, who is already looking at him, and Ed just winks and says, “Didn’t you leave your shop door open?”

(Maybe  _ that’s _ when it felt like he walked and walked and walked, because he left his damn car at the shop, too.)

~

Three months later (always three, bad things come in threes, why does Al always forget) Ed still hasn’t come back from his trip to Central to ‘grab some things’. That’s not really worrying, though, because Al’s brother is often forgetful, even when he means well.

Al is… doing better. Not great, not even good most of the time, but he’s better. He knows the spell worked, knows he’s safe from ever loving again, and it helps him to  _ become _ better. 

The townspeople are wary but they come to his shop and buy his soap and shampoo and moisturizer, even while spreading quiet rumours about his Ishvalan ways and his placenta bars (what is it with this town and their obsession with placenta? He doesn’t even know where he would  _ get _ a placenta).

Some of the braver patrons ask him to fix household items with alchemy, or to make them something specific for one affliction or another, and he does. He charges what he charges and even though the townspeople grumble, it’s easier now to let it roll off his back than it was when he was a child. 

(He may still only be eighteen, but he is less of a child now than he has ever been, with so much grief and guilt at his back.)

There’s a girl who works at the shop with him now, Winry Rockbell, and she’s kind and generous and  _ terrifying, _ just like his Teacher. Al has dinner with Winry and her grandmother Pinako every Wednesday at six in the evening without fail, on pain of being threatened with  _ literal wrenches _ by Winry. 

(Hers is a family of mechanics just as Al’s is a family of magic and alchemy, and he knows better than anyone how hard it can be to break away from something like that even if you try. Her parents, though, they  _ did _ break away, and they were doctors until they went to Ishval and everything  _ burned,  _ including them. 

Winry is an automail mechanic, and she figures that’s good enough to honour both her family’s and her parents’ legacies.)

Winry comes in for her shifts every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to help with requests and try to be a good saleswoman, but mostly she just steals the product and calls it ‘testing’, which is exactly what Ed would do if he were here.

_ Speaking of  _ -

It’s a Thursday night and Al has just come home to an empty house. A note from Sig on the fridge tells him that he and Izumi have gone to the seaside and will be back when they’re needed, but for now the book Al needs is on his bedside table. Al doesn’t need a book right now, but it’s nice to know that when he does he knows where to look. Izumi didn’t leave a note of her own, just a blocky heart in the bottom right hand corner of Sig’s note, but he appreciates it all the same.

Three things happen at once as soon as he sets the note down on the counter.

  1. He sneezes. Sneezes are Not Good, and only ever mean that something is happening with Ed that is going to cause Al a lot of grief. This, combined with:
  2. __four_ _sneezes_ means that someone is probably literally going to die, which, okay, that’s pretty worrying for an Ed-related premonition. _But then_ :_
  3. the phone rings. The Craft phone, not Al’s cell phone or the home line, and there are quite a few people who have the Craft number but all of them know to only call _that number_ if someone needs immediate assistance because they’re literally on death’s door.



He answers on the second ring: “Hello?”

“I need help.”

“ _ Brother _ ?”

“ _ Quickly _ .” The line hisses and crackles. Someone laughs in the distance, gets louder, and fades away.

“Where are you? Are you okay? Why haven’t you come home yet? What’s going on?”

“You’ll know where to find me.” Then, silence.

Swearing both over and under his breath, Al snags his keys off the counter where he left them bare minutes ago and bolts to his car.

~

All Al can remember of the trip is that he had to stop once to transmute some gas out of a stash of carbon, hydrogen, and some sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, and other mineral matter he keeps in his trunk for exactly that purpose. Other than that, the drive passes in a kind of heavy blur that _hopefully_ means his magic took over, and _not_ that he was disassociating so badly that he literally can’t remember getting here. 

Or, honestly, even where  _ here _ is. 

It’s probably Central: rough, inner-city Central, judging from the crowded, dirty houses and the sheer number of people hiding white hair and red eyes behind hoods. He had to leave his car four streets back because the streets in the ghetto were too narrow to drive through, and he’s desperately wishing for the hoodie he knows he has in the back seat because his golden hair, even short like it is, is sticking out like a sore thumb or a bullseye. 

He says a quiet  _ erev tov _ to all those close enough to hear him, doesn’t wait for them to turn around and glare at him with suspicious eyes, and walks towards the building where he just  _ knows _ Ed is. 

Ed’s waiting at the door, twitchy, face bruised, and  _ with an automail arm. _

_ “What the fuck, brother.”  _ Al hisses, hands already reaching out to try and caress everything at once  _ (the arm is still in a sling so it has to be relatively new and his face is bruised and he’s moving like he’s one stiff breeze away from a panic attack -) _

“We need to leave, now.”

“I’m going to  _ murder _ whoever did this to you.”

“If we don’t go we’re going to  _ get _ murdered,” hisses Ed, and he’s  _ actually afraid, _ which makes  _ Al _ actually afraid, and things that make both Elric brothers afraid are not to be fucked with.

They walk in silence back to the car, only breaking it to murmur more “good evenings” and a handful of  _ “b’rakhah, _ blessings,” before slipping into their respective sides of the car, putting it into gear, and driving away as fast as they can without making it look suspicious.

It’s forty-five minutes before Ed says, “If a man hits me, he only does it once.”

Al considers this. He comes to a conclusion, then considers that, and comes to a slightly different conclusion. After ten minutes of this, because Ed seems like he will shake apart if Al waits any longer, Al asks, “Belladonna?” and sees Ed nod shakily out of the corner of his eye.

“Dead?” Al asks again, not really wanting an answer.

“No. I’m an alchemist.” This is enough of an answer for Al, though if it had come from any other alchemist he would have laughed in their face. Ed, though, holds fast to the belief that alchemists should follow Ishvala’s teachings and do as little harm as reasonably possible. 

(It’s a loose interpretation of Ishvala’s teachings - which otherwise almost explicitly say  _no alchemy_ - but it's an interpretation all the same). 

“Whatthe  _ fuck _ didya do to me,” a voice slurs from the backseat, too-loud and jarring in the relative silence. 

The car careens into the other lane as Al flinches and jerks on the steering wheel, and Ed almost launches himself out of the car through the passenger-side-door. Only the auto-locks and Al’s quick reactionary instincts keep either of them from dying a screeching, metal death.

_ “Stop the car, stop the car, stop the car!” _ Ed is chanting, loud and high pitched and filled with voice cracks, scrabbling at the door handle blindly with his one functional hand. The other arm, the metal one, twitches and jerks like he’s trying to move it but the nerves haven’t been connected properly. Neither alchemy nor magic are any good at affixing nerves to metal, which means that Al can’t fix it, and Al is  _ definitely going to kill whoever did this. _

The man in the back seat grabs Ed by the neck and shoulders and starts dragging him into the back seat of the car, snarling  _ “boged”  _ and  _ “rotzecha” _ and  _ “paganiy” _ even while Ed struggles and Al tries desperately to maim the strange Ishvalan in his backseat while still driving the car and trying not to crash. 

His brother is screaming curses in Ishvalan, literal curses  _ (you don’t deserve a name, may Ishvala scour it from existence, may you never walk in the light of this world or the next, may your tongue bloat and your fingers rot so that Ishvala will never hear you) _ and Al is screaming them too, until the man gives a wordless roar and holds his hand up to Ed’s throat, the alchemical array tattooed on his arm stark and obvious.

It’s half an array, really. Destruction, without reconstruction. Seeing it held at Ed’s throat, seeing the sheen of sweat on his brother’s forehead and the tremor in his lip, makes Al’s vision go red even as he follows the man’s orders to put both hands on the wheel and keep them there. 

The man is high,  _ so high, _ and he strokes Ed’s face where the bruises are, pressing Ed’s face to his chest, threatening and caressing all at once. He’s faintly singing a tune. It sounds like an old Ishvalan drinking song.

Ed’s eyes lock with Al’s in the mirror. There’s a moment where Al knows both of them are thinking  _ how the fuck did he get into the car? _ before Ed’s lips thin infinitesimally, and Al  _ knows _ what Ed wants him to do.

Al twitches his nose, just once, and Ed says, “Scar, babe, why didn’t you just  _ tell _ me you wanted to come home with me?”

Of course the man that is  _ somehow _ inside the moving car that they’ve been driving in for the last hour is also Ed’s abusive Central boyfriend. He’s always had the  _ worst  _ taste in men. 

“Mmmmm, iss’alright, belov’d. I’ll take y’r name to th’tall’st mount’n ‘nd give it to Ish-va-la. If I kill you in his name y’r alch’my’ll be f’rg’v’n.” Scar murmurs into Ed’s hair, the hand on Ed’ neck stroking back and forth and back and forth and back -

Al hits the rumble strip on the side of the road and everyone jumps. Scar is yelling, so Ed is yelling, so  _ Al  _ is yelling, and everyone is flailing and telling everyone to  _ calm down, _ and in the confusion Al is able to pass Ed the powdered sedative he’s just transmuted from the components hidden in the glove box.

(Now is probably  _ not  _ the time to ask Al  _ why _ he has the components for a sedative in his glovebox, but if it were, he’d give you a vague story about panic attacks and ‘delays’ at the pharmacy, smile, and send you on your way.)

Still taking advantage of the distraction Al caused, Ed twists in Scar’s arms, grunting softly when the motion jars his metal shoulder, and shoves the powder at Scar’s face just as Al slams the brakes. The motion makes everyone gasp. But, more importantly, it makes the powder go up Scar’s nose, into his mouth, and into his eyes. After two minutes of coughing and hacking he’s quiet and still, slumped between the front and back seats. 

It’s a miracle neither Ed nor Al breathed any of it in.

_ (Or maybe it’s magic.) _

~

They arrive back at the house five hours and forty-five minutes later. 

They didn’t want to stop, not even to move Scar’s body. 

It  _ is _ just a body now, as Al’s sneezes predicted. The combination of the sedative and the belladonna proved to be a little much for even Scar’s massive presence, and Ed felt it as his pulse give out an hour after they shoved the powder in his face. 

Both of them could have started his heart again. Neither of them did.

“So, now that we’ve committed murder, do you want to tell me what the  _ fuck _ is going on, brother?” Al doesn’t like to swear, but he figures if there were ever a time for it, it would be now.

Silence is the only answer for a few minutes. Al's fingers tap-tap-tap on the steering wheel in the meantime, uncharacteristically (though understandably) impatient. 

They sit in the driveway, not moving, just staring forward towards the house. Ed had climbed over the center console into the front seat two minutes after feeling Scar’s pulse fade away.

Finally, Ed sighs. “He seemed nice enough, at first. All I really wanted was an Ishvalan to bang - I wanted to learn more about the language, you know? The culture? Sig is great, but all he and Mom got from the Ishvalan side of their family was the dark skin and a _ basic  _ understanding of the language. We didn’t even get  _ that. _ I mean, we got the language, but we don’t  _ look _ Ishvalan, which, considering the state of things nowadays is probably a good thing for us even if it  _ sucks _ for everyone else -”

_ “Brother. _ I know you don’t want to talk about this, because I really don’t want to talk about it either, but I just helped you accidentally  _ murder a man _ . I would do it again in a heartbeat, but I think I need to know  _ why _ we did it.”

Silence again, for a minute.  _ “Fuck. _ Fine, okay, yes,  _ okay. _ You’re right. It was all fun and games for a while - he thought I was an Amestrian slumming it. I let him think that. He hadn’t said  _ anything _ about -  _ fuck. _ Okay, so, there had been all these murders happening in Central, right? High-level alchemists,  _ State _ Alchemists, big names. They were all blasted to shit, but of course I didn’t pay attention to it because  _ why would I _ -”

“Sweet Ishvala, he did it, didn’t he? With that destruction array on his arm? How did you  _ miss _ that, brother?”

“Oh my god  _ blaming the victim _ ,  _ much?” _ Ed yells over at Al.

_ “It’s a huge array.” _ Al yells back.

Another moment of silence, a little sheepish this time. “Long shirts. I  _ did _ notice eventually, though. Asked him about it. Wanted to know if he wanted me to finish the reconstruction portion of the array, or at least rework what’s there because it’s  _ crude _ at best - anyways. That’s when he freaked out and did,” Ed motions to his automail arm, “and I had to go into hiding, a little bit.”

“A little bit.” Al’s voice is flat. Ed rolls his eyes.

“You  _ know _ what I  _ mean. _ I went to a guy, got the arm. It sucks. I waited around for it to get better, but it still sucks, so I snuck back into his place last night to get a couple things so I could come back home. I had left the pocketwatch Mom gave us on his stupid shitty fucking dresser. He caught me, then he gave me  _ this _ ,” Ed gestures to his face, “and I got out and called you, and the military. He must’ve been walking around for a couple hours by the time he found your car and crawled inside.” 

Ed's quiet for a moment, again, and Al is really starting to worry. Ed has never been one to be quiet or unsure while speaking. 

“He wasn’t… he was okay, most of the time. Really religious. Kinda quiet.  _ Doted _ on me. I didn’t love him, but I think I could have if not for the curse. He might have loved me. Well, at least until he figured out I was an alchemist, because then he  _ really _ didn’t like me. But. Anyways. That’s it.” Ed is pale and tap-tap-tapping in time with Al, on the wrist of his metal arm. His eyes are wide and darting back and forth like they do when he’s obsessing over something.

Al was quiet for a few minutes, processing. “I know an automail mechanic who will fix your arm,” he offers, finally.

Ed doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at Al, eyes still wide and flickering around. When he  _ does _ look over, ten minutes later, face pale and shiny and terrified, he says, “I’m so fucking stupid. The  _ military, _ Al. Holy shit. We have to bring Scar back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations are as below, but if you know Hebrew and know a better translation, let me know!
> 
> erev tov: good evening  
> b’rakhah: blessings  
> boged: traitor  
> rotzecha: murderer  
> paganiy: heathen
> 
> check the 'progress check' tag on my tumblr for writing updates!  
> tumblr: http://rewmariewrites.tumblr.com/


	3. Whipped Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Really? Not even like, a dry-erase marker? Anywhere?” Ed says, incredulous. His voice is a little too high for him to not be on the verge of a panic attack.
> 
> “Brother, this is all I could find. Whipped cream."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last part of Like Magic, and the last part of what I already have written! For big stories like this I like to have a full and mostly edited draft before I start posting, so it might be a hot minute until I post the next portion of the series, sorry!
> 
> As always, I've updated the tags but if I miss anything let me know!
> 
> content warnings: mentions of panic attacks, mentions of murder, loss of limb
> 
> edit 03/02/19: just fixed some grammar and flow issues, no reread necessary

Scar lays on what used to be their kitchen table (well, it still _ is _ their kitchen table, but Al will be burning it later, on principle), with his  _ very _ dead red eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. It’s creepy. And  _ gross _ . At least he’s not starting to stink yet - well, except for where his clothes are soiled from his bowels releasing upon dying.  _ That _ smells. Al’s going to have to get his car detailed, and he’s going to have to go all the way to the next town because no one in Resembool will do it, because they all think that the Elrics are creepy murderers, which they’re not. Except,  _ wait _ , they  _ are _ -

“Would you fucking  _ shut up _ for a minute? I’m trying to concentrate.” Ed hisses in Al’s direction, not bothering to tear his eyes away from the notes he made Al dredge up from where they were locked in van Hohenheim’s old office.

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I distracting you? Not the  _ hulking mass of dead flesh _ that we’re about to  _ desecrate?” _

_ That _ made Ed look up, if only for a moment. “Ishvala will probably strike our names from his memory for this,” he notes. It’s not a particularly tense statement, or even one with a lot of weight behind it, but it makes them both pause.

“I don’t know if Ishvala can see us to begin with. I’ll admit that I don’t know  _ much _ about Ishvalan teachings, or how they affect the ‘eternal spirit’, but our family’s curse has caused a lot of harm. Mostly to us, but our loved ones have had families that have been hurt too, and that's our fault. That’s definitely a breach of his teachings, or something - there's that one that says  _ ‘do no harm?’” _ Al says, considering. He  _ does not _ think about Mei’s family, the one they never had time to talk about. He  _ does not _ wonder if they even know she’s dead. 

Ed shrugs with his flesh shoulder. “I’m more scared of the fucking military than I am of Ishvala. I don’t even know if I  _ believe _ in Ishvala. He’s just like… like Mom, I guess. You know? Nostalgic?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Good. Now, go find me something that I can write an array on his-” Ed gestures in Scar's general direction, “- body with. Anything will work, we just need to do it  _ now _ , before his body really starts to decompose.”

Making a face at the idea of a decomposing man on his  _ kitchen table _ (that thing will  _ burn _ later and Al will be  _ glad _ to see it go), Al digs through drawers, shelves, cupboards, and even the fridge, and comes up after all of that holding a can of  _ whipped cream. _

_ “Really? _ Not even like, a dry-erase marker? Anywhere?” Ed says, incredulous. His voice is a little too high for him to not be on the verge of a panic attack.

“Brother, this is _all I could find._ _Whipped cream._ For our _human transmutation array.”_ Al, too, is on the verge of a panic attack. Considering the situation, he’s surprised they haven’t already had one.

_ “Fuck _ that’s so janky. Will that even work? It doesn’t fucking matter - you need to get up here, I can’t use my  _ arm _ \- I need to do this  _ now.” _ Ed is panicking and flailing, his mind moving too fast for his body, and Al is freaking out because  _ Ed  _ is freaking out, and he really wishes Sig and Izumi were here to give Ed the same  _ ‘it won't work it isn't worth it’ _ talk that they gave Al about Mei, because Al’s  _ not _ going to be able to do it properly. It won’t work, and Al’s going to fuck over his  _ eternal soul _ on some  _ abusive asshole _ because he and Ed have a  _ debilitating fear of the military industrial complex. _

“Ed, this isn’t going to bring him back.” No one can ever say that Al didn't at least try.

_ “How do you know _ ?! Huh? How do you  _ know _ ? Did you bring back  _ Mei?” _

Silence. Just for a moment, but long enough for Al’s face to go hard and emotionless, for Ed’s face to crumple just a bit in realization of what he’s said.

“Don’t cross this line, brother.” Al’s voice shakes a little with the force of his words. Ed shakes his head desperately, golden hair flying where it’s escaped from his braid, and tries another tactic.

“Then  _ help me _ ! And if this works - if it works, we’ll bring back Mei too!”

“Brother,  _ no.  _ I don't want that anymore, and neither would she.”

“I’ll do it  _ with _ or  _ without _ you, Al,” Ed snarls, eyes manic.

And that’s it. That's all Ed has to say. The decision is made right then because even if they fail, even if the military comes anyways, even if they damn themselves, even if Al  _ dies right now, _ he won’t let his brother do this by himself. 

Al just steps over to the table, takes a knife, cuts Scar’s shirt down the middle, and looks at Ed. 

“Let’s do it.”

~

“Help me dig the hole.”

“Fuck you, I only have one arm - now I only have one  _ leg  _ too, so  _ you _ dig the hole.”

“He’s  _ your _ ex-boyfriend, and he’s  _ huge,  _ so the  _ hole  _ is going to have to be huge to fit him. Why do you always go for the huge ones?”

“I like someone who can throw me around a little.” Ed says nonchalantly, looking up at the sky.

_ “It’s too soon for domestic abuse jokes!  _ It’s _ always  _ too soon for domestic abuse jokes! They’re not okay!” Al yells, stabbing the earth pointedly and repeatedly with his shovel. 

They’ve been out here for three hours now, and they’re only four feet deep. Well,  _ Al _ is only four feet deep because he’s the only one who’s been digging.  _ Ed’s _ only four feet deep because he’s short and also shallow, and Al tells him that right to his face.

_ “ _ _ Who are you calling a microscopic half-pint who didn't grow up because he doesn't drink milk? _ _ ” _ Ed cries, trying to get on his feet, ready to throw down regardless of the state of his limbs (or, more accurately, a lack thereof).

“That’s not what I said and you know it! You can’t just yell synonyms for ‘short’ at people when they make you mad!”

_ “I just did!” _

“You’re so _immature!_ How did you even have the emotional bandwidth to _find_ a murderer who hates alchemists, then make that alchemist _fall in love_ with you, and then _murder_ _him?!_ Because that’s nuts! What we’re doing is nuts! _What we did is nuts!”_ Al might be a little hysterical, but he thinks he deserves to have a little bit of a breakdown after the night they’ve had.

Apparently they’re ignoring it (which is a  _ great _ way to deal with trauma, totally fine, everything is  _ totally fine), _ but what came out of their transmutation was  _ wrong. _

It was twisted and awful, and it hissed out guttural noises that were  _ almost _ words, tripping over limbs that twitched and jumped, eyes rolling and too-wide. It managed to get off the kitchen table, and just stood there for a bit while Ed desperately tried to staunch the bleeding of his magically-amputated leg ,and Al just stood there,  _ useless, _ before the thing -  _ Scar - _ spotted Ed and lunged right for him. To touch or hug or maim or kill, Al doesn’t know what it intended, but as soon as it moved he grabbed the cast-iron pan that Izumi keeps on the stovetop and hit the  _ thing _ over the head. 

He kept hitting it and hitting it and  _ hitting it _ until it stopped moving, right in the middle of their kitchen floor, right next to the kitchen table where they grew up and did homework and lived their entire lives.

Now, it’s lying next to the grave that Al is standing in, wrapped in an old set of bedsheets so that Ed and Al can pretend they didn’t damn their immortal souls for  _ that _ . 

Obviously, they’re also trying to pretend that Ed's leg  _ didn't _ get magically amputated by whatever they did  to bring back whatever that thing was in Scar’s body. Or, well, it's not like they can pretend the leg's not gone, but Al's pretty sure they're ignoring how it happened. 

_ (As soon as Ed touched the edges of the array, little black hands that Al will  _ **_see in his nightmares forever_ ** _ came and tore away Ed’s leg piece by piece, leaving it raw and bleeding and stumped just above the knee.) _

(Al will never forgive himself for being  _ grateful _ that, just this one time, he was a little hesitant to put his hands on the array next to his brother’s. There’s no telling what the hands would have taken from him, had he put his hands down when he was supposed to.)

“I’m sorry,” is all Ed says, looking back up towards the sky from his perch beside Scar's half-dug grave, and he must  _ really, actually  _ be sorry, because Al hasn’t heard him say those words since Trisha died. Ed says sorry in other ways - leaving you something you like, or doing a chore for you behind your back - but he never says the words. It’s too much like caring, and caring is too much like love, and love is the curse.

Al just sighs, and nods, and keeps digging. He  _ should _ use alchemy for this, it would be  _ so _ much easier, but after what happened tonight it feels wrong. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be okay again, and he’ll be able to use alchemy like he did before, but for tonight… he’ll just dig.

~

Two months later, everything is basically back to the way it should be, if you ignore the enormous blackberry bush in the now-condemned corner of the yard where they buried Scar (which they emphatically  _ do  _ ignore, because they did not  _ plant _ that blackberry bush, it popped up  _ overnight). _

Sig and Izumi are  _ still _ by the seaside, which is for the best, really. Izumi is still sick, even if she’s not getting sicker at the moment, and neither Ed nor Al could handle the ever-present threat of death hanging directly over their heads like that quite so soon. The way Izumi twitches and shakes is too close to the way Trisha twitched and shook, which is too close to the way  _ Scar _ twitched and shook after their failed transmutation, and Ed and Al still have to sleep in the same room to keep those images far enough at bay to get even a couple of hours of sleep a night. 

As awful as it sounds, they don’t need a their aunt around as a physical reminder of the trauma that already lurks around every corner of their house.

They all write to each other, though, and sometimes there are pictures, so that’s nice.

Winry took one look at the automail arm that Ed was sporting and  _ shrieked _ . She spent an hour yelling about healing processes and nerve connections and the  _ nerve _ of whichever  _ hack _ slapped this  _ hunk of scrap metal _ on Ed and tried to pass it off as an  _ arm. _

Ed didn’t move, didn’t talk, not once throughout the entire process. Winry had looked at Al once, for support or explanation he doesn’t know, but he didn’t say anything either. She never asks again.

What she  _ does _ do is stay up for three days and three nights building new ports and limbs for Ed,  _ from scratch, _ before sleeping for forty-nine hours straight, and then launching herself into his thirty-six hour surgery. Ed’s still not  _ quite _ up to full mobility, but he’s still moving around without crutches  _ months _ before Winry said he would be able to. 

He’s also ‘working’ at the shop (against Winry’s explicit orders, which were  _ bed rest) _ which is going about as well as Al expected. Between Winry and Ed he never has enough product, Ed is constantly insulting customers, and everyone  _ still _ thinks all his stock has placenta in it.

It’s a testament to Winry’s skill - and her patience - that Ed has improved enough in this short time span to be walking and working, especially considering what a  _ mess _ he was when Al called her over at three-thirty-four in the morning after they finished burying Scar. When Winry finally finished yelling and took out the old automail port, she saw the extent of the scarring underneath - thick ropes of red and brown scar tissue that snaked up from the blunt edges where his shoulder used to be towards his neck and collarbone like veins - and had to go  _ break things _ in the other room before she was able to come back and finish her job. 

(She had gone directly to van Hohenheim’s office, because after Al told her how his father had left them after Trisha died, she hates him almost as much as Ed does.)

The leg was easier, she told them later, because the wound was fresh and she was able to fix it up as cleanly and pain-free as possible. The shoulder, though, will give Ed trouble for the rest of his days, giving him more pain than even the regular strain of carrying around an extra thirty pounds of metal would. Rainy days will be hard, snowy days will be harder, and more often than not, the only pain relief Ed will be able to truly find will be a hot bath. 

Even after all this, Winry refuses to let Al or Ed pay her for her services, or her kindness, even though she  _ literally did life-changing surgery  _ on Ed. 

In protest, they now both go over to dinner on Wednesdays and Ed lets Winry tinker and upgrade and try experimental functions on his automail with barely a complaint. They argue all the time, just like Ed and Al argue with each other, but Al knows that both Winry and Ed are ecstatic to have someone other than Al to yell at and about, and Winry in particular is over the moon that she has a (mostly) willing guinea pig to try all her new ideas on.

Pinako and Ed, on the other hand, are a  _ nightmare, _ if only because they  _ constantly _ launch short jokes at each other. It’s non-stop bickering, back and forth, until the evening has invariably descended into a screaming match and Winry needs to go in with her wrench. It’s entertaining, at least. It almost feels like  _ family.  _

It is astounding to Al that, even in the unwelcoming microcosm of Resembool and in the face of all they’ve done, he and his brother were able to find friends and sanctuary. It’s almost like Ishvala is sending them love through the Rockbells, but - well. Al has never believed in Ishvala like that, and he’s not about to start now. 

So, Al spends the better part of those two months after the incident waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.

After a while, it looks like the nightmares and the panic attacks and the other lasting effects of the trauma are all the consequences he and Ed will get from their ill-advised foray into human transmutation. That’s not to say that these things are not  _ awful, _ because they  _ are, _ and most days it feels like those little hands that took Ed’s leg are going to come back and take them  _ both, _ but Al knows that those days are temporary and eventually they will get better again. He got better after Mei, and Ishvala knows that he thought  _ that _ grief would be his end. So, they struggle and fight and survive, and they know that their little family will see them through.

Then, it gets  _ so much worse. _

And apparently,  _ ‘so much worse’ _ rolls into town in  _ absolutely gorgeous _ pairs while dressed head-to-toe in military blue.

They’re  _ fucked. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For updates on my progress on this work, check out the 'progress check' tag on my tumblr! additional tags are 'fma' and 'practical alchemy'
> 
> tumblr: rewmariewrites.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr at and-still-not-a-ginger
> 
> This work was inspired broadly by ShanaStoryteller's representations of Ishvalan!Ed and Al, and you will see some basic similarities in the future. Go check out their work!


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